


Chatterbox

by sunsmasher



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Xenolinguistics, and botched attempts at stuff touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsmasher/pseuds/sunsmasher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Unfortunately for the grumbly alien trying to get into his pants, John Egbert is easily distracted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chatterbox

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a meme prompt that wanted Karkat speaking Alternian with John. 
> 
> If it looks like I stole if from Marchingstuck, it's absolutely because I stole it from Marchingstuck.

John places his hand in the center of Karkat’s chest, fingers spread wide.

“Okay,” he says, “Do it again.”

“—————,” replies Karkat.

John’s eyes widen, glasses sliding up over his eyebrows. Karkat’s chest rumbles like a subwoofer as he speaks, rough skin vibrating low and warm against John’s hand, peppered with half-second stutters that translate to short, resonant clicks. 

“Whoa, Karkat, you’re like an adorable little avalanche!” John laughs, hand still glued to his boyfriend’s chest. He is completely naked except for his socks, although the right came free of his heel and clings desperately to his big toe after he tried to get Karkat’s pants off with his feet. Head propped against the footboard and Karkat’s balled-up sweater, he grins bright and shiny into the face hanging above him. Karkat, whose pants are still firmly bunched around one ankle, scowls and repositions himself on John’s chest. 

Twenty minutes ago Karkat had every intention of jumping John Egbert’s weird, alien bones. He thought he might even try ravishing him, if John was open to it. But his meticulous plans to get John’s bad-touch zone into contact with his bad-touch zone had not accounted for the human’s nanoscale attention span, and therein lay the downfall of sexy times. 

John had discovered, upon testing the accuracy of one of Vriska’s sexy troll sex tips while giving Karkat a handjob, that Karkat clicked when he swore especially loud. Instead of apologizing profusely for bending his boyfriend’s junk, as Karkat felt was warranted, John immediately began an investigation into Alternian phonetics—a decision in which Karkat had distressingly little say. He relented only because John attempting to feel up his trachea was a surprisingly pleasant sensation, even if he insisted on groping Karkat’s bare ass while doing so.

“What did you say, anyways?” John asks, still beaming.

“I said stop molesting my ass, shit for brains,” Karkat huffs, although he makes no move to reposition John’s hand. John, whose eyes are offensively blue, is not even listening.

“You sound like the prawns from District 9, dude, or, like, those African guys who click when they talk!”

“Your powerful analogies continue to astound, Egbert. How I lived without realizing my deep linguistic connection with the prawns from District 9, I’ll never know. You’ve caused a fucking paradigm shift, you masterful fucking wordsmith, you.”

John, who looks, in the dim light, like God spilled a person, is merely amused by Karkat’s scathing rhetoric. “Haha, you sound like Dave! You guys did have a lot quality time together on the meteor, huh?” He waggles his left eyebrow as he speaks, which Karkat finds distinctly unfair. 

“——^~^~^—,” Karkat grumbles, to John’s sudden fascination.

“Holy shit, dude, you sound like a dolphin! Do that again!!” 

Karkat rolls his eyes, but repeats, “^~^~^~^”

John’s eyebrows recede into his hairline and his fingers twitch against Karkat’s collarbone. “Karkat it is official, I am declaring it official. You have the coolest vocal cords ever. There are no cooler vocal cords than yours. Congrats, buddy.”

Karkat’s lips part in a smile, a tiny and easily scared smile, and blushes from his elbows up. “Here,” he says, and pulls John’s ass-grabbing hand up to the soft bit where his chin meets his neck. “I haven’t even done the cool stuff yet.”

John’s hands are warm, warmer than anyone else on the very short list of people who have touched him, and Karkat settles into them. 

“—-***—-^~~~^~—`´`´`,  
”-•º•º•º—º—¨¨——`´`´`,  
”**—_—**—-≈≈_≈≈,  
“—-***—-^~~~^~—`´`´`.”

Karkat says everything he can think to say— recites the poetry he memorized to impress Kanaya, the bits of military history Eridan used to spout, lists all the dirty names he can remember calling Sollux when they played Troll Halo together. He even sings a little, in a halting rumble, the songs Feferi taught him over video chat, her hair blossoming and twining in thick stands beneath the water. 

John doesn’t say a thing, never once interrupts, never moves from beneath Karkat even as sensation in his legs is reduced to static and white noise. He smiles a lot, smiles so hard he doesn’t think his cheeks will ever recover, and feels Karkat echo in the bones of his hands.


End file.
